stage

MARK GUARINO is a playwright whose productions include ALL THE FAME OF LOFTY DEEDS (The House Theater of Chicago), OVERNIGHT LOWS (Walkabout Theater), WE HATE THE WORLD (Zebra Crossing) PARTIAL POST and PREGNANT PAUSE (Curious Theater Branch) and some short, adventuresome plays produced at the Hideout, the Chicago rock club.

He is a collaborator with musician and painter Jon Langford of the Mekons. Their play ALL THE FAME OF LOFTY DEEDS was partially developed by Victory Gardens in Chicago and produced by The House Theater of Chicago. They are currently writing a second play in conjunction with Pivot Arts.

Mark was named a resident artist at Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY in 2006-07 and 2012. In 2007, he was awarded an artist fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt. He is the recent recipient of the 2007 Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., underwritten by the estate of Tennessee Williams. In 2001, the conference awarded him a Tennessee Williams Scholarship.

His full-length play FROM HUTCHINSON STREET is the winner of the 2006 Hidden River Arts Playwriting Competition (Philadelphia). He is also the past recipient of the national New Play Prize by Prop Theatre in Chicago, the John Gerrietts Award for Creative Writing from Loyola University Chicago and is a four-time finalist with the Chesterfield Film Project Fellowship.

The Chicago Tribune called Mark a writer whose “prose is rich, evocative and strange.” The newspaper also called his past work “fresh, heart-rending” with dialogue that “has a freshly minted sound.” The Chicago Sun-Times said his work “has a touch of the absurdist … and a deep appreciation for the tricks of memory. He also has a sharp ear for contemporary life and psychology.”